The worldwide chip shortage has put a growing challenge in Europe in the spotlight: Due to economic trends of the past years, chips are nowadays mainly manufactured outside Europe, making European core industries depend on global supply chains. As a consequence, Europe has started several initiatives to counter this problem. Among others, the European Chips Act promotes the sovereignty of the EU in chip design and manufacture. National efforts to grow the chip design capabilities complement these strains. However, the efforts will not succeed if there is a lack of skilled professionals for chip design. The project "Joint Education for Advanced Chip Design in Europe" (Edu4Chip) enhances the chip design capability in Europe by designing and implementing harmonized study programs at excellent universities in Europe and growing this way the number of chip design experts.
Scope
The programs’ unique characteristic is that students will carry out a complete chip design, starting from the high-level description of the hardware and ending with the actual manufacturing (i.e., tape-out) and test of their chips. Experts from a research institute and from industry will accompany the project and support the education of future chip designers. In this, the programs are designed for compatibility, simplifying the student exchange between European countries. The project is complemented by life-long learning modules, open for training on the job and lateral entry employees. Edu4Chip aims to train more than 150 European and 100 non-European students per year for a career in the European chip design industry. A strong collaboration with industrial partners allows for excellent education and preparation for their employment and helps to bring students into the European job market. Trainees in the programs will also have the opportunity to specialize in chip design within a specific direction, such as for low-power design fostering sustainability, secure hardware design, or design for AI. The project started the 1st of October 2023 and is set to finish the 30th of September 2027.
Objectives
Edu4Chip brings together a strong team of partners consisting of five universities, one research, one research institute, and three SMEs as beneficiaries supported formally by one SME and two industrial partners as associated partners and informally by several additional companies. The main objective of Edu4Chip is the joint development of new and the improvement of existing advanced circuit design master-level course programs at the university level, which provide students with the theoretical and practical skills to become chip designers entering the European labor market and help in this way to close the skills gap. The overall goal is achieved in Edu4Chip by:
- Obj.1: (a) Strengthening existing chip design and microelectronic master programs at four HEI partners and providing a new master program in chip design at one HEI (TUM) to teach students, in harmonized programs with hands-on experience in chip design as well as with excellent theoretical lectures, the required skills to design modern digital, analog, and mixed-signal integrated systems. (b) Providing skill training for engineers on modern chip design in the framework of life-long learning.
- Obj 2: Attracting qualified students with excellent teaching programs with intensive practical training modules framed around a tape-out project. The goal is to educate in the master programs and life-long learning modules at least 150 EU students plus 100 non-European Students per year. In addition, summer schools are planned to attract students and to support the cross-partner education concept and exchange of ideas among students. The goal is to foster diversity in this field by increasing the share of female students in comparison to similar study programs at each university.
- Obj 3: Developing the digital solutions and infrastructure to share the high effort in terms of maintaining a state-of-the-art environment with the required EDA toolchains and a joint template chip design that allows many student teams to do a chip tape-out every year.
- Obj. 4: Establishing strong long-term partnerships between HEI members to allow students to switch between universities and sharing of teaching material.
- Obj. 5: Strengthen partnerships of HEIs with local industry through internships, student thesis projects, and guest lecturers as well as between HEI and research institutes.
Partners
- Technical University of Munich (TUM)
- Technical University of Denmark (DTU)
- Tampere University (TAU)
- KTH Royal Institute of Technology
- MINRES Technologies GmbH
- LogiqWorks Ltd.
- Institut Mines-Télécom (MINES Saint-Étienne)
- SyoSil ApS
- Fraunhofer IIS
Associated Partners
Coordinator: Michael Pehl (TUM)